President Obama is moving swiftly to try to recover from his worst week in the White House, speeding up his schedule for engaging in the 2010 political races and planning to use his State of the Union address on Wednesday to show the public a feisty side, White House senior adviser David Axelrod said in a telephone interview with POLITICO.

He vowed, however, that there will be “no reinventing” of the president, even though “Washington loves a shakeup or human sacrifice.”

“There’s no need to,” Axelrod said. “We’re governing through difficult times. There’s a sense of impatience and frustration about the state of the economy, but also about the nature of how Washington works. That was true in 2008, and it’s true now. The president is as determined to deal with those things now as he was then.”

Stunned by the rejection of the Democrat in the Massachusetts Senate race last week, Obama asked David Plouffe, his 2008 campaign manager, to increase his work as an outside White House adviser.

“Everybody would acknowledge that we kind of took Massachusetts for granted and we shouldn’t have,” Axelrod said. “It just reminded us that we’ve got to be at the top of our game.”

Plouffe’s mission is to bring the winning formula he brought to the 2008 campaign to this fall’s Democratic campaigns, at a time when economic and historical headwinds threaten the party with a rout.

“The same forces that we saw at play in Massachusetts were the ones that propelled [Obama] to office,” Axelrod said. “There’s no reinventing any message here. It’s a reaffirmation of a message. And that is our goal to advocate fiercely for the middle class and for people all across this country who’ve been struggling in this economy and long before the recession.”

The steps Obama is taking are designed to combat twin dangers for his party and his presidency: disgust with Washington, combined with despair about jobs.

Aides believe the State of the Union speech will help Obama regain his political footing after a traumatic week that saw his health-care reform plan threatened with extinction because of the party’s loss of the Massachusetts seat of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy to a Republican who campaigned on an outsider message of authenticity.

Obama road-tested his new message during a town hall Friday in Ohio, when he said 20 times that he will fight for average Americans.

“The president’s feeling feisty,” Axelrod said. “He’s challenged by this mission, and he’s eager to pursue it. That should have been clear on Friday, and it’ll be clear [on Wednesday]. He’s going to make clear that the American people want to see Washington work, for Republicans and Democrats to work together to solve problems. We’re always open to that.”

Officials at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue said they see no swift resolution to the health-care standoff, although aides to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Harry Reid worked through the weekend to try to find a solution. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday that Obama was “letting the dust settle, if you will, and looking for the best path forward.”

And at week’s end, aides scrambled to respond to yet another crisis that had come out of the blue – the sudden possibility that the Senate would reject the president’s re-nomination of Ben Bernanke as Fed chairman, which would spook markets and embarrass the White House.

On Saturday, Obama made what a White House aide called “a few check-in calls to senators and members of leadership to make sure Bernanke was on track, and he was assured he was.”

Axelrod said Obama’s goal is to “make the agenda of Washington hew to [working Americans’] concerns and build an economy that works for everyone,” and that the State of the Union will include “initiatives that will build on the ones that we’ve already had to get there.”

“That was why we got elected – to push back on the special interests and make the agenda in Washington respond to the concerns of the American people and to build an economy that works for everyone and not just a fortunate few,” Axelrod said.

Plouffe has remained in close touch with top West Wing officials since the inauguration, and had always planned to increase his role heading into the midterms, after winding down his tour for his bestselling campaign memoir, “The Audacity to Win.” But now that’s happening faster.

“We’ve got a good group at the White House,” Axelrod said. “David has been in our family throughout, and everybody there has worked closely with David. He’s been off writing a book for a year. He’s going to be consulting more intensively this year because we want to put our best team on the field. But he’s not coming to work at the White House. He’s not replacing anybody. He’s just going to be more involved in the planning, particularly as it relates to the 2010 races.”

Plouffe has the specific assignment of helping the party’s candidates for House, Senate and governor’s seats replicate the Obama campaign’s innovative use of the Web and grassroots supporters for social networking, field organizing and volunteer deployment.

“We have equities in these campaigns, and we want to make sure that they maximize their ability to win,” Axelrod said. “He’s as skilled as anybody in the country, and has an amazing focus and organizational intensity. But he’s not going to be working hands-on with campaigns. He’s going to basically be helping develop the plans and review everyone once in awhile [to see] where we’re at.”

Plouffe helped pull Obama from behind to defeat Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Then in the fall, Plouffe mobilized an unprecedented army of supporters while running the most expensive campaign in American history.

In an op-ed article in Sunday’s Washington Post, Plouffe called the Tuesday vote in Massachusetts “a resounding wake-up call,” but concluded: “If Democrats will show the country we can lead when it's hard, we may not have perfect election results, but November will be nothing like the nightmare that talking heads have forecast.”

One of Plouffe’s prescriptions for his party echoed his mantra whenever the Obama for America campaign hit a rough patch: “No bed-wetting.”